Methodist Medical Center Foundation: Betty Daley

METHODIST MEDICAL CENTER ORAL HISTORIES:
BETTY DALEY
Interviewed by William (Bill) J. Wilcox Jr.
March 17, 2009
Ms. Betty Daley, Volunteer since the days of Red Cross Ladies in 1949.
After checking with the Volunteer Office, we believe Betty holds the record for the hospital Volunteer who has served the longest, 1949 to the present with about a year and a half “off”, making 58.5 years!
MR. WILCOX: I’m talking to Betty Daley at her home on March 17, 2009 and she has signed the release and we are ready to chat…..So Betty how about starting with your telling me when you came to Oak Ridge and then something about how you started to work as a volunteer with the hospital?
MRS. DALEY: I came to Oak Ridge in March 1944 and my next-door neighbor was a volunteer at the hospital.
MR. WILCOX: Here in Oak Ridge.
MRS. DALEY: Here in Oak Ridge and she suggested that I might like to be a volunteer, and at that time the volunteers were under the Red Cross.
MR. WILCOX: When you say at that time do you mean 1944 or do you mean later?
MRS. DALEY: I’ve got my certificate from the Red Cross in October 1949.
MR. WILCOX: Certificate meaning?
MRS. DALEY: You had to “go to school” and go through their training.
MR. WILCOX: Oh really, to be a “Gray Lady?
MRS. DALEY: Yes, but we were not called that at first, just “Red Cross Ladies” at that time.
MR. WILCOX: Oh, I am sorry. Red Cross Ladies.
MRS. DALEY: We were all Red Cross; we wore the dress and the veil and everything people had back in those days - the Red Cross uniforms. At that time we were not allowed to do much of anything….we delivered flowers and took mail around, and we were allowed to sit down and write a letter if somebody needed it and felt they were not capable of doing that. Of course the hospital was very small at that time, I can’t remember how many beds we had but it was real interesting and of course we had Army doctors and two of my children were born with an Army doctor assisting and one of them by another physician who had come in during that time. But we had a real large class of volunteers at that time and so I worked on Sundays because I had little children and my husband would keep them on Sundays and I would go down and do my little visiting job and carry the flowers and all that is about all that we did at that time.
MR. WILCOX: What was the training like, Betty?
MRS. DALEY: You know I have tried to think about that, I can’t remember what all we had to learn but I really can’t tell you very much about it.
MR. WILCOX: But it wasn’t just a pro-forma thing; you actually went to some classes and got some instructions?
MRS. DALEY: Well, we had people to come in and speak to us and some of the doctors and others would talk about the hospital, but it was mainly about how to get along with the public and how to meet people who were ill. At that time people stayed in the hospital for days and days and days when they had anything wrong with them.
MR. WILCOX: Well that made a difference, didn’t it?
MRS. DALEY: It made a big difference, which is why I say we were allowed to write letters for them sometimes because we furnished the paper and pen and all for them, it was quite a difference in then and now. It has been quite interesting seeing all of this evolve since that period of time.
MR. WILCOX: We will talk about that in a few minutes but let’s elaborate if we can on the early Red Cross volunteers. You say they were not called Gray Ladies at that time?
MRS. DALEY: I guess we may have been because we had the gray veil to wear. I can’t remember but I know that we were not called volunteers it was Gray Ladies.
MR. WILCOX: I see.
MRS. DALEY: So probably we were. I was probably wrong in saying that but as I say the two weeks was taken up with teaching us how to meet the public in a manner that…
MR. WILCOX: Two weeks!
MRS. DALEY: Two weeks.
MR. WILCOX: Wow!
MRS. DALEY: And then we were to have a test and I thought, “You know I may not come back on that last day. I hadn’t had a test in ages. As it was it wasn’t bad - it was mainly a review of what we had been taught over the two weeks, yes.
MR. WILCOX: Can you tell me anything about how many of these Gray Ladies there were? Were there a dozen or two dozen?
MRS. DALEY: Oh, we probably had 25 or 30.
MR. WILCOX: Is that so and a small hospital at that time?
MRS. DALEY: Yes.
MR. WILCOX: In 1949, the director of the hospital, the administrator was Dr. Lucius Salisbury. Do you remember that name at all?
MRS. DALEY: No, that is not familiar to me.
MR. WILCOX: Who did the Gray Ladies or the Red Cross Ladies get their instructions from, who did you interact with? Was it with the nurses?
MRS. DALEY: We didn’t have a whole lot of interaction with the nurses, we were just sort of by ourselves, but we were organized enough to have a president, vice president of our group, yes.
MR. WILCOX: You had a president and vice president?
MRS. DALEY: Yes, of the Gray Ladies. Someone from the Red Cross would come to us sometimes and we would have a meeting and that was the most interaction we had at all with the Red Cross really.
MR. WILCOX: Do you remember who the president was?
MRS. DALEY: I can’t remember any further back than Maggie Parrish and I think there was somebody before Maggie but I can’t remember who it was at the time.
MR. WILCOX: So did you….the rest of the ladies work one day a week, as you did?
MRS. DALEY: Most of them worked a half a day.
MR. WILCOX: A half a day. Well bring us forward a little bit from 1949. Did you continue to serve as a Gray Lady?
MRS. DALEY: Yes.
MR. WILCOX: Through the 1950’s and on?
MRS. DALEY: Yes, and then we were. I am trying to remember when we became, we went from the Gray Ladies, there was something between the Gray Ladies and the Pink Ladies, and I can’t remember what it was. .
MR. WILCOX: At some time you became the Pink Ladies?
MRS. DALEY: Someway I can’t remember how the hospital handled that because I’m not positive when we become the Pink Ladies but I remember it was just…it was just so interesting because I wouldn’t meet a lot of people until we had a meeting of the whole group because I didn’t know a lot of people, most people came here you know not knowing anyone.
MR. WILCOX: Sure.
MRS. DALEY: And I remember practically all the ladies stayed 10 or 15 years, because you know once you got started in it you enjoyed it so much that you wanted to keep on serving in a different capacity because they gradually handed different jobs to us, like greeting people at the door. At one time in the hospital we had somebody assigned to the front door to give out two tickets to visitors who wanted to go up and see people – patients couldn’t have more than two visitors at any time.
MR. WILCOX: Oh really?
MRS. DALEY: Yes and they would return the two to us when they got through visiting and we would put them back in a little file. That was about the time when we opened the tiny little gift shop. At that time the hospital had changed names.
MR. WILCOX: Yes, Mary Ann King told us last week in an interview that the gift shop started in 1962 and that was after the hospital came under the Methodist direction in 1960, so the gift shop came very soon after that the…but there were still Gray Ladies then, weren’t there?
MRS. DALEY: Yes.
MR. WILCOX: When they got to be the Pink Ladies didn’t the Red Cross bow out and the Pink Ladies report then to the hospital?
MRS. DALEY: I am trying to think when we went from Pink to Gray Ladies.
MR. WILCOX: From Gray to Pink? From Red Cross to Gray Ladies and to Pink Ladies, that was the progression as well as…
MRS. DALEY: I remember that.
MR. WILCOX: Red Cross to Gray to Pink, yes. What do you remember about the early days of the Methodist; were you involved in the gift shop.
MRS. DALEY: No, I was never. I never worked in the gift shop. I just kept on doing the other things that they would have us do. They gradually gave us more and more responsibilities.
MR. WILCOX: Do you remember if they had visiting hours in the earliest days?
MRS. DALEY: I have a feeling that we did. I think 9 P.M. was as late in the evening as anybody could come in. I am not positive about that - that is the way I remember it.
MR. WILCOX: My recollection is vague too. I remember you had to go at certain times.
MRS. DALEY: Yes.
MR. WILCOX: They didn’t want you down there except for 1 P.M to 2 P.M or whatever it was?
MRS. DALEY: I was thinking, the hospital’s visiting hours were like 10 A.M. to 1 P.M or 10 A.M. to 2 P.M … And then in the evening you had evening hours too.
MR. WILCOX: What kind of changes do you think have been made that have really helped the volunteers through the years? You have certainly seen some changes?
MRS. DALEY: Oh, yes, yes. I think that we became more and more valuable to the hospital as the years went on because they were willing to turn more and more things over to us and allow us to do them because as you said, the gift shop was about the first thing in the ….what I call the new building from the old building when the Methodist had it and at that time, as I say we would sit at a front desk and then we had the gift shop and I don’t believe that we did much more than that at that time when the gift shop first opened. I was trying to think what came next. I can’t remember when we got to the Westmall Park, when Jeanie (Wilcox) became the director of volunteers. Jeanie was the one who kept us going and adding things for us, we could do more and more things for the hospital all the time.
MR. WILCOX: We developed rapidly during those years 1970’s and the 1980’s as you said doing more and more?
MRS. DALEY: Well, we had much more interaction with the patients. Previous to that point (Jeanie becoming Director in 1972) most everything by volunteers was done downstairs. You know we would maybe have someone in the Emergency Room but very seldom did they go upstairs except to maybe deliver flowers or anything that came in as gifts for people.
MR. WILCOX: Did you deliver mail as well as the flowers?
MRS. DALEY: Yes.
MR. WILCOX: People got a lot of cards?
MRS. DALEY: Oh yes.
MR. WILCOX: As you were saying they were staying a long time?
MRS. DALEY: Longer and longer, yes.
MR. WILCOX: So they probably got a lot more flowers and mail, than they do now a days?
MRS. DALEY: Because I can remember after Jeannie had started, they allowed us to do more and more things. The Patient Representatives could sit down with the patients and talk to them to get there comments on their treatment, or do things for them. As you say the stays were longer and longer and you got to know the patients.
MR. WILCOX: Got to know some of the patients?
MRS. DALEY: I would go back and see the same person two or three weeks in a row, now they don’t stay but about two days. You are lucky if you get to them to interview them.
MR. WILCOX: You probably never get to see them twice, stays of over a week?
MRS. DALEY: No, very seldom, very seldom.
MR. WILCOX: That is an interesting change?
MRS. DALEY: And of course they added so many things as far as the nurses and all were concerned as far as supervisors and all that, of course the hospital was growing all the time and more need for management and its just been interesting seeing different things evolved.
MR. WILCOX: Well how many years have you been a volunteer? Have you been a volunteer ever since 1949?
MRS. DALEY: Except for about a year and a half.
MR. WILCOX: Is that a fact – that’s wonderful.
MRS. DALEY: I notice you were talking about administration and all, there is so much more…in the old days you knew the administrator, he knew the volunteers and you felt like you interacted more with the office.. And then as the hospital grew your relationship with the administrator was not as quite as much until about the time in the 1960’s.
MR. WILCOX: You must have known Paul Bjork?
MRS. DALEY: Yes.
MR. WILCOX: He was the administrator in the early 1960’s – until the Methodist first took over which was in 1960 and he left in 1967.
MRS. DALEY: Wasn’t Marshall coming in at that time?
MR. WILCOX: Marshall came in 1967. You remember both of them?
MRS. DALEY: Oh, yeah. And I think the volunteers knew Marshall probably better than Bjork because the hospital had expanded and he was more the type to get out and visit with the volunteers. He even came to some of our meetings.
MR. WILCOX: Marshall was a very people person wasn’t he. You served fifty eight and half years of volunteer service, Mrs. Daley that’s a great record of service ….
MRS. DALEY: I was only 5 when I first started! 
MR. WILCOX: That is a whale of a record.
MRS. DALEY: Well I have met some mighty nice people.
MR. WILCOX: I’ll be interested in looking and seeing if there is anybody who exceeds that.
MRS. DALEY: The only one who had put in more hours than I had back oh…I guess when Jeanie first started the record was held by Connie Kiser.
MR. WILCOX: Connie Kiser?
MRS. DALEY: But Connie had been a Red Cross worker in Knoxville and then came out here, I had not been working at the hospital for several years and I know that she had more hours than I had. I don’t know whether anybody else has lasted as long as I have or not, I can’t say.….
MR. WILCOX: I’ll bet you have the record. If we say you started in mid-1949, that’s 60 years to mid-2009, and then taking away the year and a half you say you did not work, that means you’ve volunteered 58.5 years?
MRS. DALEY: It is a long time isn’t it. I hadn’t realized how long it had been.
MR. WILCOX: I remember Connie had a long string of ribbons and bars, I remember that.
MRS. DALEY: She loved her working at the hospital, she really did.
MR. WILCOX: June Please also has a long record I believe in terms of hours?
MRS. DALEY: Oh, my goodness yes.
MR. WILCOX: In terms of hours, I hear she is the tops.
MRS. DALEY: My hours have slackened off over the last couple of years maybe just because of illness or something like that.
MR. WILCOX: Sure.
MRS. DALEY: I have loved doing this job.
MR. WILCOX: Well you have seen them come and go?
MRS. DALEY: Oh, yeah.
MR. WILCOX: Well I thank you very, very much. Do you have anything else you what to add?
MRS. DALEY: I was trying to think of who those early Patient Representatives were now….
MR. WILCOX: Where you one of the Patient Reps? Oh you were? Tell me about that.
MRS. DALEY: Let’s see Betty Jo Hacker was with us, and several people from your church….Lee Young, Judy Kidd.
MR. WILCOX: Half a dozen or so?
MRS. DALEY: Oh yeah, I remember that there were three or four from your church. At the very beginning we worked a full day, more than we do now because it took us longer because, we recognized and got to know slightly the patients after two or three weeks’ time there so we would sit down and spend more time than we do now. I have a picture and I looked for it today to see if I had it, I don’t know where it is, to show the ladies back probably when we still worn our little caps and all from the Red Cross.
MR. WILCOX: I have one that, I could not find today I was going to bring it but it is a 1949 picture and it is a Red Cross person in the old hospital giving certificates out to a group of the volunteers in 1949.
MRS. DALEY: Oh my goodness. I will see if I could identify some of them for you.
MR. WILCOX: That must have been one of the early groups?
MRS. DALEY: I don’t know how long they had been established at the hospital when I first went, I just don’t have any idea.
MR. WILCOX: Well?
MRS. DALEY: If I think of some outstanding things, I’ll write them down and send them to you.
MR. WILCOX: And when you edit this you can add them in.
MRS. DALEY: Ok.
MR. WILCOX: One other question. Tell me about the first money raiser event you remember?
MRS. DALEY: The earliest money raising event that the volunteers had that I remember , we were at the Flea Market at Oak Ridge High School where they still have the Flea Market, that was the first time we had ever raised money.
MR. WILCOX: Can you remember/guess what year that was, Betty?
MRS. DALEY: I am sorry I can’t, probably in the early 70’s. Because Jeanie’s program started in 1970 or 1971, didn’t it or was it earlier than that? The Patient Rep program.
MR. WILCOX: Early seventies?
MRS. DALEY: Either the late sixties or early seventies and we had a truck and we got there at 6 o’clock in the morning and I don’t know how many other people had gotten there, we thought we were getting there so early, because we had accumulated lots of material to sell and we all had on our pink coats and we worked so hard and we raised a lot of money at one time.
MR. WILCOX: Is that right? A great success.
MRS. DALEY: Yes, it really was.
MR. WILCOX: Didn’t you sell it out before noon?
MRS. DALEY: You know, I can’t remember, I know it was a big success. But we also knew we didn’t want to do that again. It was so much work.
MR. WILCOX: Too much work?
MRS. DALEY: Oh yeah. Well you had to have some place to store the stuff and I don’t know how we did that. I don’t know where we kept it or anything. But we had lots of help, lots of volunteers.
MR. WILCOX: Did you do clothing as well as everything else?
MRS. DALEY: I don’t remember whether we had clothing of not, I think it was just more…
MR. WILCOX: That is just a real chore to have clothing?
MRS. DALEY: But we had a good time doing it but it was hard work. Hard work. I will always remember that.
MR. WILCOX: That is great. Thank you.
[End of Interview]

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METHODIST MEDICAL CENTER ORAL HISTORIES:
BETTY DALEY
Interviewed by William (Bill) J. Wilcox Jr.
March 17, 2009
Ms. Betty Daley, Volunteer since the days of Red Cross Ladies in 1949.
After checking with the Volunteer Office, we believe Betty holds the record for the hospital Volunteer who has served the longest, 1949 to the present with about a year and a half “off”, making 58.5 years!
MR. WILCOX: I’m talking to Betty Daley at her home on March 17, 2009 and she has signed the release and we are ready to chat…..So Betty how about starting with your telling me when you came to Oak Ridge and then something about how you started to work as a volunteer with the hospital?
MRS. DALEY: I came to Oak Ridge in March 1944 and my next-door neighbor was a volunteer at the hospital.
MR. WILCOX: Here in Oak Ridge.
MRS. DALEY: Here in Oak Ridge and she suggested that I might like to be a volunteer, and at that time the volunteers were under the Red Cross.
MR. WILCOX: When you say at that time do you mean 1944 or do you mean later?
MRS. DALEY: I’ve got my certificate from the Red Cross in October 1949.
MR. WILCOX: Certificate meaning?
MRS. DALEY: You had to “go to school” and go through their training.
MR. WILCOX: Oh really, to be a “Gray Lady?
MRS. DALEY: Yes, but we were not called that at first, just “Red Cross Ladies” at that time.
MR. WILCOX: Oh, I am sorry. Red Cross Ladies.
MRS. DALEY: We were all Red Cross; we wore the dress and the veil and everything people had back in those days - the Red Cross uniforms. At that time we were not allowed to do much of anything….we delivered flowers and took mail around, and we were allowed to sit down and write a letter if somebody needed it and felt they were not capable of doing that. Of course the hospital was very small at that time, I can’t remember how many beds we had but it was real interesting and of course we had Army doctors and two of my children were born with an Army doctor assisting and one of them by another physician who had come in during that time. But we had a real large class of volunteers at that time and so I worked on Sundays because I had little children and my husband would keep them on Sundays and I would go down and do my little visiting job and carry the flowers and all that is about all that we did at that time.
MR. WILCOX: What was the training like, Betty?
MRS. DALEY: You know I have tried to think about that, I can’t remember what all we had to learn but I really can’t tell you very much about it.
MR. WILCOX: But it wasn’t just a pro-forma thing; you actually went to some classes and got some instructions?
MRS. DALEY: Well, we had people to come in and speak to us and some of the doctors and others would talk about the hospital, but it was mainly about how to get along with the public and how to meet people who were ill. At that time people stayed in the hospital for days and days and days when they had anything wrong with them.
MR. WILCOX: Well that made a difference, didn’t it?
MRS. DALEY: It made a big difference, which is why I say we were allowed to write letters for them sometimes because we furnished the paper and pen and all for them, it was quite a difference in then and now. It has been quite interesting seeing all of this evolve since that period of time.
MR. WILCOX: We will talk about that in a few minutes but let’s elaborate if we can on the early Red Cross volunteers. You say they were not called Gray Ladies at that time?
MRS. DALEY: I guess we may have been because we had the gray veil to wear. I can’t remember but I know that we were not called volunteers it was Gray Ladies.
MR. WILCOX: I see.
MRS. DALEY: So probably we were. I was probably wrong in saying that but as I say the two weeks was taken up with teaching us how to meet the public in a manner that…
MR. WILCOX: Two weeks!
MRS. DALEY: Two weeks.
MR. WILCOX: Wow!
MRS. DALEY: And then we were to have a test and I thought, “You know I may not come back on that last day. I hadn’t had a test in ages. As it was it wasn’t bad - it was mainly a review of what we had been taught over the two weeks, yes.
MR. WILCOX: Can you tell me anything about how many of these Gray Ladies there were? Were there a dozen or two dozen?
MRS. DALEY: Oh, we probably had 25 or 30.
MR. WILCOX: Is that so and a small hospital at that time?
MRS. DALEY: Yes.
MR. WILCOX: In 1949, the director of the hospital, the administrator was Dr. Lucius Salisbury. Do you remember that name at all?
MRS. DALEY: No, that is not familiar to me.
MR. WILCOX: Who did the Gray Ladies or the Red Cross Ladies get their instructions from, who did you interact with? Was it with the nurses?
MRS. DALEY: We didn’t have a whole lot of interaction with the nurses, we were just sort of by ourselves, but we were organized enough to have a president, vice president of our group, yes.
MR. WILCOX: You had a president and vice president?
MRS. DALEY: Yes, of the Gray Ladies. Someone from the Red Cross would come to us sometimes and we would have a meeting and that was the most interaction we had at all with the Red Cross really.
MR. WILCOX: Do you remember who the president was?
MRS. DALEY: I can’t remember any further back than Maggie Parrish and I think there was somebody before Maggie but I can’t remember who it was at the time.
MR. WILCOX: So did you….the rest of the ladies work one day a week, as you did?
MRS. DALEY: Most of them worked a half a day.
MR. WILCOX: A half a day. Well bring us forward a little bit from 1949. Did you continue to serve as a Gray Lady?
MRS. DALEY: Yes.
MR. WILCOX: Through the 1950’s and on?
MRS. DALEY: Yes, and then we were. I am trying to remember when we became, we went from the Gray Ladies, there was something between the Gray Ladies and the Pink Ladies, and I can’t remember what it was. .
MR. WILCOX: At some time you became the Pink Ladies?
MRS. DALEY: Someway I can’t remember how the hospital handled that because I’m not positive when we become the Pink Ladies but I remember it was just…it was just so interesting because I wouldn’t meet a lot of people until we had a meeting of the whole group because I didn’t know a lot of people, most people came here you know not knowing anyone.
MR. WILCOX: Sure.
MRS. DALEY: And I remember practically all the ladies stayed 10 or 15 years, because you know once you got started in it you enjoyed it so much that you wanted to keep on serving in a different capacity because they gradually handed different jobs to us, like greeting people at the door. At one time in the hospital we had somebody assigned to the front door to give out two tickets to visitors who wanted to go up and see people – patients couldn’t have more than two visitors at any time.
MR. WILCOX: Oh really?
MRS. DALEY: Yes and they would return the two to us when they got through visiting and we would put them back in a little file. That was about the time when we opened the tiny little gift shop. At that time the hospital had changed names.
MR. WILCOX: Yes, Mary Ann King told us last week in an interview that the gift shop started in 1962 and that was after the hospital came under the Methodist direction in 1960, so the gift shop came very soon after that the…but there were still Gray Ladies then, weren’t there?
MRS. DALEY: Yes.
MR. WILCOX: When they got to be the Pink Ladies didn’t the Red Cross bow out and the Pink Ladies report then to the hospital?
MRS. DALEY: I am trying to think when we went from Pink to Gray Ladies.
MR. WILCOX: From Gray to Pink? From Red Cross to Gray Ladies and to Pink Ladies, that was the progression as well as…
MRS. DALEY: I remember that.
MR. WILCOX: Red Cross to Gray to Pink, yes. What do you remember about the early days of the Methodist; were you involved in the gift shop.
MRS. DALEY: No, I was never. I never worked in the gift shop. I just kept on doing the other things that they would have us do. They gradually gave us more and more responsibilities.
MR. WILCOX: Do you remember if they had visiting hours in the earliest days?
MRS. DALEY: I have a feeling that we did. I think 9 P.M. was as late in the evening as anybody could come in. I am not positive about that - that is the way I remember it.
MR. WILCOX: My recollection is vague too. I remember you had to go at certain times.
MRS. DALEY: Yes.
MR. WILCOX: They didn’t want you down there except for 1 P.M to 2 P.M or whatever it was?
MRS. DALEY: I was thinking, the hospital’s visiting hours were like 10 A.M. to 1 P.M or 10 A.M. to 2 P.M … And then in the evening you had evening hours too.
MR. WILCOX: What kind of changes do you think have been made that have really helped the volunteers through the years? You have certainly seen some changes?
MRS. DALEY: Oh, yes, yes. I think that we became more and more valuable to the hospital as the years went on because they were willing to turn more and more things over to us and allow us to do them because as you said, the gift shop was about the first thing in the ….what I call the new building from the old building when the Methodist had it and at that time, as I say we would sit at a front desk and then we had the gift shop and I don’t believe that we did much more than that at that time when the gift shop first opened. I was trying to think what came next. I can’t remember when we got to the Westmall Park, when Jeanie (Wilcox) became the director of volunteers. Jeanie was the one who kept us going and adding things for us, we could do more and more things for the hospital all the time.
MR. WILCOX: We developed rapidly during those years 1970’s and the 1980’s as you said doing more and more?
MRS. DALEY: Well, we had much more interaction with the patients. Previous to that point (Jeanie becoming Director in 1972) most everything by volunteers was done downstairs. You know we would maybe have someone in the Emergency Room but very seldom did they go upstairs except to maybe deliver flowers or anything that came in as gifts for people.
MR. WILCOX: Did you deliver mail as well as the flowers?
MRS. DALEY: Yes.
MR. WILCOX: People got a lot of cards?
MRS. DALEY: Oh yes.
MR. WILCOX: As you were saying they were staying a long time?
MRS. DALEY: Longer and longer, yes.
MR. WILCOX: So they probably got a lot more flowers and mail, than they do now a days?
MRS. DALEY: Because I can remember after Jeannie had started, they allowed us to do more and more things. The Patient Representatives could sit down with the patients and talk to them to get there comments on their treatment, or do things for them. As you say the stays were longer and longer and you got to know the patients.
MR. WILCOX: Got to know some of the patients?
MRS. DALEY: I would go back and see the same person two or three weeks in a row, now they don’t stay but about two days. You are lucky if you get to them to interview them.
MR. WILCOX: You probably never get to see them twice, stays of over a week?
MRS. DALEY: No, very seldom, very seldom.
MR. WILCOX: That is an interesting change?
MRS. DALEY: And of course they added so many things as far as the nurses and all were concerned as far as supervisors and all that, of course the hospital was growing all the time and more need for management and its just been interesting seeing different things evolved.
MR. WILCOX: Well how many years have you been a volunteer? Have you been a volunteer ever since 1949?
MRS. DALEY: Except for about a year and a half.
MR. WILCOX: Is that a fact – that’s wonderful.
MRS. DALEY: I notice you were talking about administration and all, there is so much more…in the old days you knew the administrator, he knew the volunteers and you felt like you interacted more with the office.. And then as the hospital grew your relationship with the administrator was not as quite as much until about the time in the 1960’s.
MR. WILCOX: You must have known Paul Bjork?
MRS. DALEY: Yes.
MR. WILCOX: He was the administrator in the early 1960’s – until the Methodist first took over which was in 1960 and he left in 1967.
MRS. DALEY: Wasn’t Marshall coming in at that time?
MR. WILCOX: Marshall came in 1967. You remember both of them?
MRS. DALEY: Oh, yeah. And I think the volunteers knew Marshall probably better than Bjork because the hospital had expanded and he was more the type to get out and visit with the volunteers. He even came to some of our meetings.
MR. WILCOX: Marshall was a very people person wasn’t he. You served fifty eight and half years of volunteer service, Mrs. Daley that’s a great record of service ….
MRS. DALEY: I was only 5 when I first started! 
MR. WILCOX: That is a whale of a record.
MRS. DALEY: Well I have met some mighty nice people.
MR. WILCOX: I’ll be interested in looking and seeing if there is anybody who exceeds that.
MRS. DALEY: The only one who had put in more hours than I had back oh…I guess when Jeanie first started the record was held by Connie Kiser.
MR. WILCOX: Connie Kiser?
MRS. DALEY: But Connie had been a Red Cross worker in Knoxville and then came out here, I had not been working at the hospital for several years and I know that she had more hours than I had. I don’t know whether anybody else has lasted as long as I have or not, I can’t say.….
MR. WILCOX: I’ll bet you have the record. If we say you started in mid-1949, that’s 60 years to mid-2009, and then taking away the year and a half you say you did not work, that means you’ve volunteered 58.5 years?
MRS. DALEY: It is a long time isn’t it. I hadn’t realized how long it had been.
MR. WILCOX: I remember Connie had a long string of ribbons and bars, I remember that.
MRS. DALEY: She loved her working at the hospital, she really did.
MR. WILCOX: June Please also has a long record I believe in terms of hours?
MRS. DALEY: Oh, my goodness yes.
MR. WILCOX: In terms of hours, I hear she is the tops.
MRS. DALEY: My hours have slackened off over the last couple of years maybe just because of illness or something like that.
MR. WILCOX: Sure.
MRS. DALEY: I have loved doing this job.
MR. WILCOX: Well you have seen them come and go?
MRS. DALEY: Oh, yeah.
MR. WILCOX: Well I thank you very, very much. Do you have anything else you what to add?
MRS. DALEY: I was trying to think of who those early Patient Representatives were now….
MR. WILCOX: Where you one of the Patient Reps? Oh you were? Tell me about that.
MRS. DALEY: Let’s see Betty Jo Hacker was with us, and several people from your church….Lee Young, Judy Kidd.
MR. WILCOX: Half a dozen or so?
MRS. DALEY: Oh yeah, I remember that there were three or four from your church. At the very beginning we worked a full day, more than we do now because it took us longer because, we recognized and got to know slightly the patients after two or three weeks’ time there so we would sit down and spend more time than we do now. I have a picture and I looked for it today to see if I had it, I don’t know where it is, to show the ladies back probably when we still worn our little caps and all from the Red Cross.
MR. WILCOX: I have one that, I could not find today I was going to bring it but it is a 1949 picture and it is a Red Cross person in the old hospital giving certificates out to a group of the volunteers in 1949.
MRS. DALEY: Oh my goodness. I will see if I could identify some of them for you.
MR. WILCOX: That must have been one of the early groups?
MRS. DALEY: I don’t know how long they had been established at the hospital when I first went, I just don’t have any idea.
MR. WILCOX: Well?
MRS. DALEY: If I think of some outstanding things, I’ll write them down and send them to you.
MR. WILCOX: And when you edit this you can add them in.
MRS. DALEY: Ok.
MR. WILCOX: One other question. Tell me about the first money raiser event you remember?
MRS. DALEY: The earliest money raising event that the volunteers had that I remember , we were at the Flea Market at Oak Ridge High School where they still have the Flea Market, that was the first time we had ever raised money.
MR. WILCOX: Can you remember/guess what year that was, Betty?
MRS. DALEY: I am sorry I can’t, probably in the early 70’s. Because Jeanie’s program started in 1970 or 1971, didn’t it or was it earlier than that? The Patient Rep program.
MR. WILCOX: Early seventies?
MRS. DALEY: Either the late sixties or early seventies and we had a truck and we got there at 6 o’clock in the morning and I don’t know how many other people had gotten there, we thought we were getting there so early, because we had accumulated lots of material to sell and we all had on our pink coats and we worked so hard and we raised a lot of money at one time.
MR. WILCOX: Is that right? A great success.
MRS. DALEY: Yes, it really was.
MR. WILCOX: Didn’t you sell it out before noon?
MRS. DALEY: You know, I can’t remember, I know it was a big success. But we also knew we didn’t want to do that again. It was so much work.
MR. WILCOX: Too much work?
MRS. DALEY: Oh yeah. Well you had to have some place to store the stuff and I don’t know how we did that. I don’t know where we kept it or anything. But we had lots of help, lots of volunteers.
MR. WILCOX: Did you do clothing as well as everything else?
MRS. DALEY: I don’t remember whether we had clothing of not, I think it was just more…
MR. WILCOX: That is just a real chore to have clothing?
MRS. DALEY: But we had a good time doing it but it was hard work. Hard work. I will always remember that.
MR. WILCOX: That is great. Thank you.
[End of Interview]